Recurring Themes, part 2

Allison of Fraske Designs has researched some recurring themes in some Boston Handmade members' work. This is the second of a series of posts on the topic...

Betsy Baker of Stonehouse Studio is constantly inspired by her little city garden. Betsy's work has always been very organic, but this year she has been exploring flowers and leaves in particular. She has developed a polymer technique to try to captures the nuances, colors and tranquility of her urban oasis.


Heather and Kerry From Twigs and Heather have multiple recurring themes in their work: Nature is the ovbvious one, but the pleasure and pain of love (especially in Kerry's work) and romance in general is also evident.

The most frequent recurring themes in the work of Reclaimed to You's Jessica Burko are fragmentation and loss. Jessica represents these feelings visually by photographing figures in motion, and juxtaposing those photos along side of found and collected papers bearing images of houses, windows, nature, and patterns reminiscent of wallpaper and writing paper. The paper elements in her work are stitched together or attached with adhesives and communicate non-linear narratives as they interweave with vintage photos and fragments of text from books and unearthed journals. Jessica's most recent work is a series of 'paper quilts' which are collages stitched together with thread. The photos and journal pages that she incorporates into her work are not her own, nor of her family, and by utilizing them in the collages she is adopting unknown histories as her own and weaving her story into something new.

What recurring themes do you have in your work?